Past Blasting - Hot Rodding in 1996

Set the Way-Back Machine, Sherman, to the year 1966. "Where are we going, Mr. Peabody?" Back to the good ol' days of hot rodding. Oh, and Sherman, do something about those geeky glasses, OK?

You usually hear it from old-time hot rodders. It's the same old wheeze: The '60s, man, those were the days when everyone was into hot rods. It was a whole lot better back then—less complicated and more fun.

We thought it would be fun to compare hot rodding 30 years ago to today's hobby to see if that statement is really true. Nostalgia is cool, as long as you're looking back at it. Everyone wants to think that things were easier and better, but perhaps the '90s are really the good ol' days. You decide. 1966

Hot rodding is like rock 'n'; roll. The music will always be classic, but watching those '60s music videos hammers home just how old that stuff really is. The same is true of cars. Restored musclecars are hip, and those cars have attained a sort of cult status. But take a walk through the hot rod parts museum from the '60s and you realize how far we've come. We're still building '55 Chevys and '32 Fords, but Stromberg carburetors are a dim memory.

In 1966 Stone, Woods & Cook were racing an A/Gas Supercharged Hemi Willys that ran 9.80s while Top Gas dragsters were running only 8.20s. Tube front axles were all the rage and retreaded slicks were common. Street tires were incredibly crude, rude and rock hard. The high-tech tires were nylon bias-belted Firestone Super Sport 500s, Goodyears or U.S. Royals, and radials were still on the drawing board. On the positive side, high-octane, leaded gasoline was in abundance. Fuel companies advertised premium gas at well over 100 octane (that would be rated today at 98 R+M/2), capable of sustaining street engine compression ratios of 12:1 or more. This was the first year of emission controls in California, with air pumps found on only new cars, but for the rest of the country, smog controls consisted of a simple PCV valve.

Engines were certainly simpler. Ford was charging with its 390, 406 and 427 big-blocks while 1966 found the 396 Rat motor in the Chevelle in mass quantities. Chrysler was arguably the big-block king with its 383, 426-Wedge and the debut of the Street Hemi. Small-blocks were decidedly small. Chrysler had its 318, Ford had the 302, and Chevy made do with the venerable 327 since the 350 was still a year away from hitting the streets in the as-yet-unborn Camaro. Imagine, a street scene without Camaros!

High tech in camshafts was solid lifter grinds with huge duration numbers yet relatively small lift numbers. Induction systems were equally crude. Big-cfm carburetors were expensive and hard to find, so multiple carburetion systems were popular. Holley and Carter carburetors were hot but usually limited to around 600 cfm. Man-A-Fre built a small-block Chevy manifold that mounted four two-barrels, and Edelbrock offered one mounting six Holley two-barrels. Fuel injection existed, but only in mechanical form, and with the exception of the Corvette's Rochester fuel injection, it was a race-only deal.

In drivetrains, automatics were only beginning to find a following. B&M was the premier automatic builder, with the torque converter the biggest drawback. This led to the proliferation of ClutchFlite and Clutch Hydro automatics, which fitted a clutch to the automatic and replaced the converter. This was the era when hot rodders reviled slush box automatics, a time when a real man would drive only a four-speed. HOT ROD was full of "crash box" techniques to produce quicker shifts.

In 1966 a 3.08 rear-gear ratio was considered Bonneville material. The factory was offering muscelcars right off the showroom floor with 4.10:1 and 4.56:1 rear gears, and it was acceptable to cruise down the freeway taching 3500 just to keep up with the flow of traffic.

Street suspensions were downright crude. Straight axles were popular, with nosebleed front end heights and waist-level centers of gravity not unusual. A few of the more exotic cars had ladder bars, some had traction bars, and virtually all cars had tiny drum brakes barely capable of pulling a 100-mph, 3800-pound vehicle down safely more than once an hour. Combined with the rock-hard tires of the day, "handling" was a term used to describe a car that didn't scrape all the chrome off the door handle when negotiating a fast turn.

All told, 1966 was the year of heavy-handed horsepower combined with vehicles that were fast in a straight line, but hardly refined. And if it didn't go, chrome it!

1996If we could teleport a hot rodder from 1966 to today, he would be overwhelmed by the bewildering selection of high-performance parts. If there is one word that describes the '90s approach to hot rodding, it must be the "kit". The systems approach to hot rodding has never been more prevalent than in today's hot rod world. Matched packages of an intake, a camshaft, a carburetor and heads as well as suspension and exhaust systems make it much easier for the hot rodder to choose the right parts the first time for a killer street car.

Today, small-blocks now run the gamut from 260- to 450ci engines in the same cylinder block envelopes. Big-blocks span from small 396s to monster aftermarket blocks that can grunt out 700 to 800-plus inches.

Just looking at induction systems, there is a crushing selection of carburetors available to the hot rodder, from emissions pieces all the way to single "designer" Holley Dominator carbs that flow more air than a 4-inch sewer pipe. Intake manifolds abound for virtually any engine combination, from a mild mileage-maker to single-plane, single-carb intakes to massive twin Dominator Holley intakes.

Fuel injection now means electronic. The digital age has struck hard with killer-efficient EFI systems. For example, our Mighty Mouse street 302 small-block Chevy engine (see feature elsewhere in this issue) makes 550 horsepower on 92-octane pump gas, yet is capable of 23 mpg highway mileage. That was unheard of in 1966. This engine takes advantage of electronic fuel-and-spark control that makes combining EFI with a centrifugal blower a breeze.

Bolt-on suspension and disc brake kits now offer the average enthusiast the hardware to build a daily driver street car that can out-handle, out-brake and easily out-accelerate even the most awesome of '60s road race cars. Another plus for driveability is the new generation of manual and automatic overdrive transmissions. Overdrive allows a street car to run a deep gear for strong acceleration, yet reduces engine rpm at highway speeds—in essence, the best of both worlds. The key to this gearbox success is improved durability. While overdrives are not new, in the' 60s they were available only in weak three-speed manuals that were hardly performance oriented.

For some people, the '60s might be a groovy place to visit. But for hot rodders, we're better off in the too-hip '90s. We've got just too many cool toys to play with!